This disclosure is directed to portable structures. While the descriptions of various embodiments are concerned generally with camping tents, for example, those skilled in the art will recognize the wider applicability of the inventive features disclosed hereinafter.
The prior art is replete with tent constructions all allegedly making it easy to at least erect the tent structure. Among those constructions are self-erecting popup tents and umbrella tents, for example. While the art in general makes erecting the tent relatively easy, folding the tent for storage is not often accomplished with the same ease. There also has been a need to develop a frame system which can be folded, stored and shipped in a reduced sized package. The product package then must be easy to open and the enclosed structure must be easy to erect by the eventual customer, and repackaged by that customer after use.
The reduction in size of the folded structure is an important consideration for a manufacturer and the manufacturer's customers, commonly retail locations having displays of the product for sale and/or internet sites having associated storage facilities which ship the product to the final consumer. Merely by way of example, with a dome style tent of the present disclosure, a typical forty foot shipping container will hold 1,760 pieces of a thirty inch package, versus 1425 pieces of the longer prior art construction designs. Customers commonly use twelve foot in length storage shelves. Again, the smaller thirty inch package increases storage capacity by twenty five percent, versus the prior art package size of thirty seven inches. That kind of reduction is an important consideration with the designs described herein. Shipping or package size also is important to the final retail customer or buyer, because the retail customer is faced with the same transportation and storage issues, although those issues are associated with only a single package instead of storage and display of a number of product units.
In addition, cost of the various mechanisms employed in the tent construction is an important consideration. That is to say, both the initial cost for the parts themselves and their assembly must be reasonable in order to provide a realistic price point for a manufacturer and the ability to replace parts of the tent frame, which may become damaged in use, must be easy to accomplish for warranty purposes.
This disclosure describes in one illustrative embodiment the use of a spider hub structure main body having a plurality of legs extending outwardly from the body. Preferably each leg of the hub has a tent pole interconnected to the hub structure on one end of the poles. Each of the tent poles are assembled from a plurality of pole sections. The pole sections are interconnected to one another along a novel arrangement in several illustrative embodiments enabling the hub structure to be used across a range of tent products. A particular feature of those products is the reduced length of the stored assembly.
In any event, the pole sections together define a tent pole having a proximate end connected to the hub and a distal end in ground supporting relationship for the frame structure. In one embodiment, preferably at least the distal pole section has first and second parts which telescope within one another allowing their extension during deployment and re-engagement within one another for storage. Depending on the tent size and/or configuration, the hub may have a variety of tent poles associated with it. The pole sections preferably are fiberglass although other materials may be used, if desired. Commonly the pole sections which telescope within one another are metal, for example. The distal end pole section has a locking mechanism associated with it which permits the poles to be connected to the material of the portable structure as later described.
A feature of the construction is that the frame structure always is attached to or associated with the material forming the portable structure, commonly a tent. As will be appreciated, because all of the components of the frame system are always associated with the tent material, loss of component parts is eliminated while replacement of individual components of the frame is accomplished easily.
The structure is easy to set up for use and disassembles or compacts easily for storage. Another particular feature of the present disclosure is that the tent structure is relatively self-erecting across a variety of tent configurations. When extended from their stored position, the tent poles and hub act to raise the tent frame to its intended deployed position.
Also disclosed are structures for accomplishing and methods for compacting and/or folding the tent poles for storage, the stored position, the compacted package having a reduced package length.